Falling for austerity hook, line and sinker

BIO

Anna is a business writer. During her 20-year Hong Kong career, she’s written everything from stock market reports and luxury goods sector analysis to speeches for the HKSAR Chief Executive and served as president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club for two years.

Officials have curtailed their ways while diners have not. Tasmanian oysters are favoured over locally sourced shellfish. Photo: AFP

New leader Xi Jinping's December clampdown on exuberant entertaining by the mainland's seven million government officials seems to have worked.

Shanghai's gourmet restaurants and posh hotels have seen business slump 20 per cent since officials were limited to four courses plus soup, with no more claret and expensive spirits.

So reported Shanghai Daily, with the austerity drive so far costing city eateries 60 million yuan (HK$74 million). The end of the gravy train means hotels and restaurants must recoup lost revenue with creative cost-cutting.

"They have to explore more avenues for making profit but the tactics vary, case by case," says one top Shanghai hotel.

Beijing has been hit harder, with revenues down by half since early January. Hotels such as the Hilton Beijing Wangfujing, 15 minutes' walk from the government district and Tiananmen Square, have really felt the pinch, according to executive chef Randolph Ng.

Lunar New Year would typically be peak season, but this year he is scrambling to compensate with more external catering, according to seafoodsource.com

This mine of piscatorial information reveals that fish is pivotal to lavish banquets, when officials reflect their status by scoffing expensive species, such as grouper.

But times are now tough for the eateries. Food inflation rose 20 per cent in the run-up to the new year due to supply shortages and opportunism by distributors.

Ng, who allots 40 per cent of his food budget to seafood, relies heavily on high-value fish such as grouper and salmon. Although wild stocks are under threat, the Hilton serves both wild and farmed grouper. It charges 200 yuan per 50-gram serving of wild, line-caught grouper, says Ng.

The Singaporean chef has seen his cosmopolitan clients' tastes change during seven years on the mainland. Sashimi is the thing now for banquet starters. "Four years ago, no one offered sashimi. Now it's in banquets and a la carte in many restaurants," he says.

Ng puts such new trends down to mainlanders travelling, and then wanting the same food at home. Or they take photos of seafood outlets when travelling and then open an identical restaurant when they return home.

But diners are picky. It must be Tasmanian oysters and New Zealand mussels - locally farmed shellfish just won't do, due to dredging harvest methods which render shells too sandy. Austerity be damned - expect to pay a lot more in the mainland's top city restaurants.

For more details on indiscriminate discretionary spending, see Anna's wealth blog at scmp.com/wealthblog